Egypt Steps Up Campaign Against Muslims With Arrests

July 20, 1995|By New York Times News Service.

CAIRO — In a move that broadens Egypt's three-year campaign against Muslim militants, the government has arrested 15 leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood over the past two days, including a senior clergyman at Islam's oldest university, Al Azhar.

"This is the first time that this government arrested someone from Al Azhar," said Mostapha Mashhour, a senior official of the Muslim Brotherhood, on Wednesday. Mashhour also confirmed the arrest of Sheik Sayed Askar, director of public information at the 1,000-year-old university.

Fourteen other members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an umbrella organization for political and social activities with thousands of members across the Arab world, have been arrested in the crackdown, Mashhour said.

Several of those arrested hold high positions in government institutions, including a former deputy minister of industry, Rashad Nigmeldine; three former members of the Egyptian parliament; several municipal and school officials; and a banker.

Critics of the Muslim Brotherhood have long argued that its leaders have supplied financial and ideological support to the estimated 3,000 underground fighters who have been battling the government since 1992.

". . . (T)hey have no proof any of these people has been involved in terrorism," said Mashhour, contending that the government's aim is to eliminate Brotherhood figures who might run in parliamentary elections planned for November.

An Interior Ministry statement said those arrested are accused of illegal contact with Sudan, which Egypt has accused of supporting a failed plot to assassinate President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia last month.

The government crackdown on senior Islamic figures, who have distanced themselves from the younger more violent Islamic guerrillas, parallels similar crackdowns in Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and by the Palestinian Authority of Yasser Arafat in Gaza.